• Key Information

  • Miranda

  • Type
    Moon (of Uranus)
  • Diameter
    146 miles
  • Distance from Uranus
    80,399 miles
  • Orbit Time
    33 hours 56 minutes
  • Length of Day
    33 hours 55 minutes
  • Time around Sun
    84.021 Earth years
  • Atmosphere
    None
  • Temperature
    -351.7 °F
  • Date of Discovery
    Gerard P. Kuiper, February 16, 1948
  • Learning Point
  • Miranda is one of the smallest moons in the solar system that has a more or less round shape, perhaps the smallest an object can be and form into a sphere.
  • Project
  • Draw Miranda with it's unusual surface features.
  • Location
  • Located in
    Solar System, orbiting Uranus
  • Fun Facts
  • NASA was puzzled by the surface features when they received the images from Voyager 2 on 25 January 1986, just 24 hours before they went to the press.
  • Verona Rupes is a 12 and a half mile high scarp that is the highest cliff in the Solar System.
  • Miranda is also unusual in that it doesn't orbit round the equator of Uranus, but at an angle from it. This is surprising because of how close it is to Uranus.
  • The oval shaped coronae on the surface of Miranda were thought to suggest that Miranda was broken apart in the past before reforming, but now it is thought to be from movement of rock and ice under the surface.